Players Can't Pay For Themselves In Shirt Sales

We're pretty much at the halfway point between the two most important times of the season... the transfer window. We're obsessed with it. "Winning" the transfer window seems more important to some fans than actually winning games. Arsenal didn't have the window we expected, with just Cech coming in, and this has led to weeks and weeks of bleating on social media about the so called negligence of our manager.

His defenders will point out how difficult it is to make a transfer happen at the top level and this infographic from Aon explains a little bit about the industries behind the scences in transfers. There were some interesting points I found in there. Once such point is a player "paying for himself" in shirt sales. It's a fantasy.

David Beckham, one of the most marketable footballers in the world brough 10000 extra shirt sales to PSG when he moved there for a short stint. If you apply that to a paid for transfer, for example, Alexis Sanchez, you are looking at £500k in additional shirt sales. Now consider that most players aren't as marketable as Beckham, factor in how many of those shirts would have been purchased anyway, the manufacturing costs, logistics, shelf space, storage, wages, taxes, image rights etc and that £500k isn't going to leave a lot of change to bolster Arsenal's bank account (this is just an example so no smart comments about how it's already bursting ;P).

Even if the £500k was all for Arsenal that's still less than 1.5% of Alexis Sanchez' purchase price. Ignoring wages, signing fees, agents fees and incidental costs he would have to sell that many shirts at that level of profit for 70 YEARS to "pay for himself" in shirts.

Maybe this is one consideration for Wenger when buying a new player - how much they'll actually be worth to the club - and if they're going to cost a lot of money but not make the first team (see Schneiderlin as an example of "back up" we "missed out on" for Coquelin) then he's probably going to give them a swerve.

There are plenty more gems in the infographic to get the cogs turning. Have a look and leave us a comment with what you've inferred from it.

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